


Coyote Kingdom

by impanica



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:07:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29437263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impanica/pseuds/impanica
Summary: Collected short stories/prose.
Kudos: 4





	1. In the Heart of the World

When Aerith’s crying reached a certain pitch, her mother would start to dance. In the green amniotic tank, her naked limbs unfurled. Her arms opened out from shoulders to fingertips. Her feet, the fierce arches of them, made a beat above the floor. In that slow dark light, her mother looked alien. She couldn’t spin, not with the ventilator holding her by the mouth, the many wires billowing out of her nape like unraveled muscle or jellyfish string, but her hips swung anyway, as if she could feel the weight of many colorful skirts.

The assistants were disappointed to learn that her mother’s behavior was only human. But Hojo let it be. It was the only thing that would shut up the girl, he said—meaning how Aerith would stop crying, sit upright, and quiet her eyes, the better to watch her mother with.

One day, long after Aerith’s tears had burned up, her mother danced for the silver-haired boy weeping on the operating table. Then Hojo had to put a stop to it. It was one thing for a mother to comfort her daughter, but this—all along, Aerith had known—was different. This woman was trying to tell them something.

—

Elmyra, her midsection damp with water and soapsuds, looked up from her empty hands with a face that held even less, and that was when Aerith knew to leave.

As always, the man found her eventually. He used to remind her, like every Turk, of the lab. Now he also came hand-in-hand with sundown, the ancestral memory of still-warm shirts coming off the clotheslines. She lay down on her back in the middle of the road and waited.

“What are you doing down there?” he asked, materializing beside her.

“Listening.”

“To?”

“The Planet.”

He tilted his head, ever amused. Aerith pitied him for having such an obnoxious face and for being so fundamentally unlovable. “Is it speaking to you?” She nodded. “What does it say?”

“That you’re a stupid idiot,” said Aerith, “ _stupid.”_

She kicked his ankle hard, trying to trip him and break all his bones, but it was like kicking a steel door. Her foot hurt and all the man said was, “Ah,” in a voice that wasn’t pained enough. She got up and sprinted away.

At the fork, sweaty and tired, she looked left towards the train station. Bravery, the clean good feeling she imagined it to be, was biding its time. So she turned right towards the corner store. The old Gongagan couple playing tablut across the street gave her a hundred gil so she could buy them a hard pack and, with the change, a thick slice of sponge cake for herself. One of the women gave her a single cigarette for the road and told her to sell it to the older kids on the playground.

The playground was empty. Aerith sat on top of the fat bear slide and put the cigarette between her lips, pretending to smoke. Her thoughts instantly matured. Life was but a race towards the solitude of the divine. She unwrapped the cling film around her sponge cake. It was her favorite, cold and jiggly and just the right amount of sweet. There was a thin layer of strawberry cream in the middle. Aerith could feel her entire personality consolidating into her teeth.

The man appeared again. “Will you come down?” he asked. Looking down at him, she blowgunned the cigarette at the dot on his forehead. It missed. “Come down, please.”

“Make me,” she replied.

“You’ll make Mrs. Gainsborough worry, staying out like this.”

“No.”

“Your dinner will get cold.”

“So will you, after you’re dead,” she said evilly. “After I kill you,” she clarified. She held out a smaller-than-half chunk of cake.

He climbed on top of the bear and sat down next to her. The space he took up had a mysterious weight to it. “Thank you,” he said, taking his piece. Together they ate and watched the cantilevered apartments light up one by one, thin PVC kites slapping above the satellites.

Hearing the distant thunder of railway couplers, she turned to the man. “Play hide and seek with me.”

“Sure,” he said.

“If I win, you have to leave me alone forever.”

“What if I win? Will you go home then?”

“Okay.”

He smiled. “Okay,” he repeated.

“Close your eyes.”

He closed them. “You have to cover them,” she said. He placed his palms against his eyelids. “Count to fifty. Out loud, or you lose.”

“One,” he said.

Aerith slid off the fat bear’s head and crawled into the sand pit inside. Wishing for the shovels Elmyra had brought out—but never used—to bury her mother, she layered cold smooth sand over herself. Then she closed her eyes and imagined being dead. Her soul flew out of her face. It floated up and up like a loose balloon through a hole in the steel sky into that deeper blue-black sky she had only seen in pictures. Meanwhile, her remains fell downward into the earth. Flowers and weeds curled over her. A tree splayed its large hand over her torso and rose.

A knock came from the outside of the bear. “Found you.” The man’s voice lowered as he crouched down. “You’re right here, Aerith.”

Only she wasn’t here. Her soul was with her mother and Elmyra’s husband. It was boarding the twilight train with them now. Still decomposing, bones and hair, she saw her soul rest its head on her mother’s shoulder.

“Aerith?” The man shifted. Fabric dragged over asphalt. “Aerith,” he said a third time, even lower. Then nothing.

But the gentle sounds of their breathing continued. She opened her eyes and looked over. The man had lain down next to her. From this angle his face looked more boy than man—something about his eyelashes, maybe. The softness of the shadows. Their bodies rose and fell in the sand.


	2. The Haunting

They unrolled the HRP over the cleanest patch of ground near the corpse—Wutaian, mid-30s, a solid 200-pound motherfucker. SOLDIERs loved their messy kills, the shitheads. Rude grabbed the hands, Reno the feet. They had to tilt it as they lifted it so the blood pooled into a pocket in the armor under the armpit instead of pouring all over the liner. It dropped with a thud, like it was as bored as Reno was. Reno kicked the left arm into place. Sometimes he had a hard time falling asleep because he got too self-conscious about the positioning of his limbs. They zipped the bag up over the rubber outsoles, the piss-stained trousers, the stab wound, the dumb fucker’s shocked expression. With a brusque gardener’s hand, Rude pulled the bristles of caught hair out of the metal teeth. They folded the bioshield over the bag to seal it, and Rude slung the webbing strap over his shoulder.

Zack tied the locket around the dog tags with a farmhand’s knot and slid them both inside the envelope. “What are you, some dirty little sympathizer?” Reno teased him.

“Do for others what you want them to do for you," the kid replied, cheerful as shit. Behind them, Rude threw the body bag into the back of the van. “That’s the code we should all try to live by."

“Well, when you see 'em," said Reno, "tell that to Shinra's firing squad."


End file.
